Center for Safe Schools

Center for Safe Schools

Fall Board Meeting

November 12, 2009--Minutes

The Board meeting was held at Sara Salmon's house and the following people were present: Michele and Kevin Roth, Nancy Zamperelli, Nick Avalos, Kristi and George Price, Ardith Stitt and Ron Mirr.

1. Sara described the "state of the union" with regard to Peace4Kids and Center activities. Because of the recession, the main goal of the business is to keep afloat and to begin to pay down the credit card debt Sara has accumulated to run the non profit. The debt was close to $50,000 and has now been paid down to$15,000.

School districts have not been paying on time; some have waited six months to pay for training and some have not paid at all.

Trainings, however, are starting to pick up and Sara has estimated that the debt can be paid off within another year.

2. Trainings. New trainings have been done in Austin, Texas and Murietta, California. Sara would like to open up the state of Texas and will present at the alternatives to suspension conference in February to advertise the material and trainings. There has been an interest expressed from another district in San Antonio.

3. Poland. Sara will not be speaking at the conference because of the flu; they wanted Ron to speak in her place so they did have someone say a few words about Peace4Kids which they have translated and are selling. We discussed the copyright violation and decided to do nothing.

4. Grants. Ron has written two successful Safe and Healthy Student Initiatives grants--one in Marshalltown and one in Iowa City. The Center is written in those grants for $15,000 each. We are also writing one for Jeffco, Murietta, and Martin County Florida. Betsy Thompson and Sara have written a secondary counseling grant that was funded by the state of Colorado and she is working with Arvada, Jefferson and Alameda High Schools to implement the model guidance program. So far, the needs assessments have been completed, analyzed and objectives and competencies have been established. It looks like they may be also interested in writing the new elementary and secondary counseling grant opening up in the winter.

6. School projects. The Adams 12 district has paid us a consulting fee of $2400 as well as approximately $10,000 worth of materials to place Peace4Kids in two elementary schools as a universal intervention. So far they have compared office referrals to last year's and there has been a 75 per cent reduction. The teacher are teaching the 3 lessons a month and focusing on two character traits per month. They are doing a super job.

7. Adams 14 has contacted us to provide help with Angie Weber to put the curriculum with their special ed group.

8. Denver Public Schools has us on a contract for $15,000 to put Peace4Kids as their required curriculum in all affective needs special ed classrooms.

9. Technical issues. Neil Simon who is our IT person has continued to support us in developing the drsarablog, our web site and keeping us up to speed in back up drives, etc. We now have "Giving First" on both the web and blog so people can click and make a donation that generates an immediate tax deductible letter. This is an area we really need to focus on--getting a pool of donors. The Board agreed and promised to help.

10. Do the Right Thing, Family Spring Fling. We are planning for our first community parent/child interactive day with Radio Disney. We are getting sponsors and discussed the $200 booth costs; we looked at the Ramads and it looks great and are working with our forty potential booths so they are character ed friendly. We agreed to charge $5 per family and some rides would cost. We hope to have 1,000 people come through. The Ramada is $1,000, Disney--$3500 and Parents' Magazine ads are $650. So we have our work cut out for us.

11. New Ventures. We are doing a coaches training June 7 and 8 at the Ramada. We will charge $1,000 for the initial certificate, offer college credit and then require a follow up training every two years. We are submitting our paper work to Adams College to obtain authorization for the 2 graduate credits.

12. Disney volunteers. Amie has set up a great way to get volunteers for our Spring Fling. Disney offers a volunteer day--get a ticket to the Magic Kingdom. So far we have signed up over 17 volunteers. They are making the banners, setting up tables, creating posters, sewing, and calling people.

13. Goals for the year. We ended the meeting sharing goals for the upcoming year. They include

1. We will continue paying off the credit card debt to 0 by June 2010.

2. The Center will develop an additional 10 coaches by June, 2010.

3. A donor pool will be established with a minimum of $10,000 by June , 2010.

4. A working volunteer organization will be established with a minimum of fifty people by June, 2010.

5. At least one outside the country training will be set up by fall of 2010. (this has alsready happened; Sara is invited to Norway for the week of September 8 to train the new college cohort group in Stavanger, Norway)

6. The Center will apply for a minimum of three foundation grants for operating money and project money by June, 2010.

The meeting ended with the decision that the next one will take place when Ron returns to Colorado!